Don't Be Surprised by China's Collapse || Peter Zeihan

It's time to come out from under your rock and face the music - China is collapsing. If that comes as a shock to you, watch this video to get up to speed.

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#china #chinese #collapse

[TonyTooTuff]

I’m young enough to remember when you said that China was going to collapse in 10 years, that was 20 years ago.

[mavek]

I remember first hearing about China's imminent collapse from my economy teacher when I was 15. Then I've been hearing about it year after year. I'm gonna turn 45 in a few weeks. 😂

[lingxianglu]

I work in Tech and lots of market data started to become unreliable in 2018. I remember they stop providing housing market data in the end of 2018. It was hard to understand that time and now it all made sense.

[wongwk]

I think this topic can be continued for another 100 years, Zeihan, pls make sure you pass it to your son, and grandson to come. A good income from youtube!

[armorer]

To paraphrase Ayn Rand: You can ignore reality. However, you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

[j.t.r]

I'm in Southeast Asia, have lived here for 6 years. The Chinese tourists have disappeared, along with construction projects that have stopped almost entirely in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and probably other places. The contraction is real.

[nowun]

Predicting China's "collapse" has got to be an extremely profitable venture. I've seen videos like this drop almost every day, for as long as this platform has existed.

[johnnytang]

He has been saying for years and most likely China collapsing in his dreams. Let's see how many years more to see actual things happening... lol

[CerealOnWheels]

This is the 94th time china has collapsed in my lifetime, and im only 29.

[norwegianblue]

Peter has really outdone himself now. He has hiked so high up that you can actually see the curve of the Earth behind him.

[themachine]

People don’t realize that the main basis for Zeihan argument is demographics. The sector of the population from the developed world driving exports from China is moving into mass retirement in this decade while the Chinese themselves are finally running out of cheap labor as they have empty out their rural areas. And both cannot be replaced because of demographic collapse. The end result is less trading volume, which degrades economies of scale, which leads to higher cost, which ends in less trading volume and so on and so forth.

[pieceofschmidtgamer]

In many ways the development of the PRC mirrors that of the Soviet Union, where for the longest time it appeared that the Soviets were going from strength to strength until the late 80s where everything fell apart within a few years.

As to those pointing out that analysts have been predicting the imminent collapse of China for decades now (and have obviously been wrong), I think the main reason why that is has been as an over-correction to the failure to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Pretty much everyone, even the people paid to predict this stuff, failed to predict the fall of the Soviet System and they didn't want to be caught flatfooted with China. Basically the analysts thought "well, Communism failed in Russia, so why shouldn't it fail everywhere, including China?" It of course completely ignored the internal situation in China.

It should be noted that no Communist state has lasted for more than a century. The Soviets collapsed after roughly 69 years. As an aside, had they lasted a full century they would've only collapsed last year. So we have roughly about three decades for China to collapse before the CCP's centennial in 2049 and, as the last few years has shown, a lot can happen in a very short period of time. Remember that from 1914 (the start of WWI) to 1945 (the end of WWII) was 31 years. A lot happened in those 31 years.

That 31 year period also was a period that saw the collapse of a geopolitical balance of power that started in 1815. It's not hard to see that a similar situation has been developing for the last few years. If WWI put the Congress of Vienna Balance of Power in the hospital, then WWII was when the plug was finally pulled.

[DrFortune]

After 3 decades of China's collapse theory, the only thing collapse is the theory itself. 😂

[forgetn]

In my past life I dealt with China’s foreign service. What was amazing is that we knew 20 years ago that it was a one way conversation. They would tell us what they wanted us to know and then just shut down. At first we though it was incompetence but after a frozen different officials it was clear that this was an institutional makeup. They just don’t have the tools to report how the wider world functions.
My guess is that the removal of data was not driven by XI, but rather by bureaucrats who didn’t want to report the data. They would not have to report if it didn’t exist anymore!
I suspect you are right about China too many decisions need to be made that will harm powerful interests and therefor these decisions will not or maybe cannot be made.

[missingseattle]

Watched the video, I heard those arguments in my social studies class in grade nine. I then heard those arguments when I was at university. I also heard this 10-15 years ago working at Boeing. Last time I checked china population is 4 times that of the US. I’ve been hearing about the eminent doom of China since I was 14, I’m now 60. I guarantee China will be in a lot better place than the USA in 2030 that’s IF there is a USA in 2030.

[xucg]

It doesn't really matter whether China will collapse or not. What matters is that videos promoting China's collapse get a lot of hits and will bring in a good income for the video producers.

[C.Fecteau-AU-MJ]

It was 2005 when my father, a very senior executive for a very, very large chemical company, started to work on divesting the corporation's various Chinese manufacturing capacity, supply chains, skills base and training facilities into countries such as India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil, Texas (it's a country) and his most favourite country of all to visit/do business with (drumroll) Mexico.

That was when I knew the writing was on the wall.

They didn't do anything unless they knew something everyone else didn't, or everyone else refused to admit.

I remember Dad telling me at the time that they knew in about 2001 that the CCP had been lying about their population numbers and their relative skills base compared to other countries. Pair that with the increasingly difficult to deal with central government and it stopped making sense for them to continue relying on them about 20 years ago. The last few years of Dad's career, he barely visited mainland China once and he used to go every quarter for at least a fortnight in the 90s.

They can lie to the people, but the business executives and their bean counters will find them out once the maths stops adding up and that's literally all they're interested in at the end of the day. Well, and environmental responsibility, in the age of the internet, they're finally taking that shit seriously and that's another red flag when it comes to dealing with the CCP.

[kendipietro]

"If you look back on the last few years, things have been odd."
You have a marvelous way with understatement, Mr Zeihan.

[ricke]

The channel "China Insights" is excellent in documenting what's happening in China on the ground, with lots of supporting video. Very interesting, and highly recommend.

[andypandy]

History has shown us that when an economy starts failing its leaders need other distractions from problems at home. General Galteri of Argentina is a an example.